Physicist Brian Cox tells SmartLess he got a D on his math A-level because New Order was playing the Haçienda the night before — and he figured he was going to be a rock star anyway. He walks Jason Bateman through the 'block universe' idea from Einstein's relativity, explaining that all past and future moments still exist the way cities on a map still exist after you leave them. Cox also concedes, with genuine surprise, that Jason's long-running mirror thought experiment is basically correct: a mirror placed at the sun's distance would reflect Earth as it was 16 minutes ago.
Key Moments
Brian Cox
“New Order, we're doing a gig at the Hass. So, they were at the Hassienda the night before my math A level and I thought, well, it's more important to go and see New Order at the Hassienda because I thought I was going to be a musician.”
Cox explains why he got a D on his math A-level exam, the surprising origin story behind a world-famous physicist.
“There are ideas now from the study of black holes that suggest that space and time emerge from something deeper. So we're even starting to talk about building blocks of space and time.”
Cox introduces the cutting-edge idea that space and time themselves may not be fundamental but emergent from something more basic.
“Every moment is still there. It's like a map. So you could imagine drawing a map of the world now. I could leave London and come and fly to Los Angeles. You wouldn't say that London has gone.”
Cox explains Einstein's 'block universe' concept — that all moments in time coexist the way places on a map do.
“If you put a mirror where the sun is and you could see that then I guess I guess you're right. You'd be you'd see a reflection of the earth as it was 16 minutes ago.”
Cox concedes — with genuine surprise — that Jason Bateman's years-long mirror thought experiment is physically correct.
SmartLess is a comedy podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett, in which one host surprises the other two with a mystery guest each episode. The show blends genuine curiosity with irreverent humor, making it one of the most downloaded podcasts in the world. Its format produces a mix of candid celebrity conversation and absurdist banter that has earned it a massive global following.
Takeaways
1
Mirror at the sun would show Earth 16 minutes ago Because light travels at 186,000 miles per second, a mirror placed at the sun's distance (~93 million miles) would take 8 minutes to receive light from Earth and 8 minutes to reflect it back, meaning you would see a 16-minute-old image of Earth. Cox confirmed this on air after years of Jason Bateman raising the thought experiment. It's a concrete, checkable illustration of how looking at distant objects is always looking into the past.
2
A New Order concert derailed a physics career — briefly Cox attended a New Order show at Manchester's Haçienda the night before his math A-level exam, got a D, and initially planned on a music career — he played keyboards in D:Ream, whose song became the soundtrack to Tony Blair's 1997 election victory. He later retook math, graduated with honors in physics, earned a PhD, and worked on CERN. The story illustrates how the path into science is rarely linear.
3
All past moments still exist, says Einstein Cox explains the 'block universe' model from Einstein's relativity: every moment in time is as real and persistent as a city on a map. You don't travel through time so much as you travel over a landscape where everything — past and future — is already there. This reframes memory and anticipation not as mental constructs but as access to real coordinates in spacetime.
4
Space and time may not be fundamental New research into black holes is leading physicists to suspect that space and time are emergent properties — arising from something deeper, the way consciousness emerges from neurons. Cox draws the analogy explicitly: just as we don't think consciousness is a single atom but a pattern that arises from many, space and time may arise from more basic 'building blocks' we haven't identified yet. This has direct implications for any theory of the universe's origin.
5
Simulation theory is hard to logically disprove Philosopher Nick Bostrom's simulation argument — that a sufficiently powerful future computer could run a reality indistinguishable from our own — turns out to be remarkably hard to refute on logical grounds alone. Cox admits he personally doesn't believe we're in a simulation but acknowledges he has no logical argument to support that intuition. The difficulty isn't that simulation theory has evidence; it's that it has no clean counter-evidence either.